I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: July 23, 2025] Pixies

I have seen Pixies four times in the last eight years.  I didn’t really know if I wanted to see them again–indeed when these two shows were announced I was iffy about the whole thing.  I did want to go to the first of two nights–where they were playing Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde (since they don’t play very much from either of those albums in their sets–I’ve only seen 2 songs from Bossanova and only 4 from Trompe).  But that turned out to be the night of The Decemberists concert, and I wasn’t going to pass up The Decemberists.

A couple of days before this, I asked my wife if she’d like to go to this show–mostly because Kurt Vile was opening.  She loves Kurt and, as she says, doesn’t know anything by Pixies (except, it turns out Here Comes Your Man).  She agreed and we wound up buying tickets at the box office day of (the first night sold out this one did not).

The Kurt show was great and I told my wife that Pixies are interesting because they do not talk between songs–indeed, they don’t talk at all.  And they will play like 30 songs in 90 minutes.

She felt bad that she didn’t know anything going into the show, but I told her afterwards that they played nearly ten (out of about 30) that I had never heard before.  But it was the 2o songs in between that I was really psyched about.

I was unsure who their new bass player was–it’s Emma Richardson of Band of Skulls.  The biggest difference between her and Paz (who I really liked) is that Emma has blonde hair.  Otherwise, she is an excellent addition to the band.

She sang the first song (and what I assumed was the final song).  The first song was a David Lynch cover “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” that apparently Pixies released a long long time ago on a B-sides record.  She also sang Into the White.  Interestingly (or not) they did not play Gigantic (the most famous Kim Deal sung song).

Heaven is a slow, meandering song, something unlike most Pixies songs, so it felt like it was building to something.  Which turned out to be a song from their 2019 album that I didn’t know.  So, yes, I’m an old school Pixies fan and haven’t listened to much of anything they ‘ve released since they reunited.

But that’s okay because they jumped right into Here Comes Your Man and followed it with a Surfer Rosa classic, Vamos.  That was followed by three songs from their newest album, which I hadn’t listened to at all.  Then later on in the set they played five new songs in a row.  They did this last time as well.  And I guess if you know he new album that’s great, but if you don’t, a big chunk of songs in a row is rough.

Joey Santiago then had a couple of minutes to do a solo which comprised mostly him making weird sounds with his guitar cable.  He then used his hat to playa noisy banging solo.

I hadn’t really thought about it, but if they had played both Bossanova and Trompe le Monde the day before, they weren’t going to play any of those songs tonight.  Which necessarily meant a lot of songs from Doolittle (10 songs in total). The middle of the set–from Gouge Away to Monkey Gone to Heaven was a great mix of Doolittle tracks and older Surfer Rosa titles, like Caribou, a slow number that is always fun to hear.

After the second group of new songs they played Wave of Mutilation UK Surf version which was interesting as they had played the original of t he song not too long before that.  After a rollicking Mr Grieves, they played Nimrod’s Song, which has a great moment that he stops the song and shouts “You are the son of incestuous union.”

A few songs earlier, my wife needed to escape the crush of people (and surprisingly hot room) so she moved off to the side a bit.  But when they started Neil Young’s Winterlong, I’m sure I hear her gasp with delight. She loved that song and we’ve seen Neil 3 times but he has not played it.  It may not have been Neil himself, but it sounded great.

Then they played Where is My Mind and the crowd went berserk.

When I saw Pixies at Summer Stage, they ended the show with Into the White.  The stage slowly filled with white fog until the band was totally obscured.  When they played it tonight I assumed the same would happen, but the fog never quite overtook the band.  I also assumed that that was the end of the show.  Pixies do not always do an encore.  But this time, Black Francis and David Lovering seemed to talk to someone in the front and they all returned to positions and played a blistering Debaser.  It was an outstanding ending to a show that I enjoyed much more than I thought I would.

I would still have preferred the first night, but this was joyous fun.  It also marks the biggest distance between the first time I saw a band and the most recent–35 years and 11 months!